Deactivating my Facebook Account

I joined Facebook more than 5 years back. While I have been mulling over quitting the network for quite some time, i decided to take the plunge a month back. It is then that I realized that Facebook had quite an elaborate feedback mechanism in order to retain it’s users. I was asked to give them a reason why I was quitting the social network. I decided to elaborate.

You know I will be. I need my dopamine rush and I need to stalk people. But let’s just say that I don’t want people to access my email address or phone number in the meanwhile or judge my face book profile, and hey thanks for letting me know what log out means. If only I had known this for the last 5 years.

That is a good idea. Maybe I can add 900 more friends and track carefully edited highlights of their life and feel miserable about why I am not able to take that trip to that exotic island which the guy whom I met at a friend’s birthday ONCE, went to.

Or maybe I can just talk to the 10–15 friends I know well and maybe get the chance to know them better.

I don’t think anyone would want to know which pages I have liked, which celebrities I am following or which videos I have shared for entertaining/influencing my friends. Maybe the marketers might want to know. But you are already selling that to them. Aren’t you?

Now this is something which I can get on board with. Controlling content. I need these out

1. Right wing/left wing/liberals each shouting out propaganda and trying to convince one another that the other is moronic

2. Links trying to sell me stuff

3. Facebook live videos

In fact give me a blank page.

That is a brilliant Suggestion!. Or maybe I can just deactivate?

From you?. No,I actually don’t . You already know me almost like google.

So despite all the useful tips that Facebook suggested to make it more useful, I decided to deactivate . (Facebook does not let you delete the account. Clearly it knows it’s cocaine like allurance)

Now after a month of deactivating my account, I am still living, eating ,sleeping and the world is still round.

Somehow magically, people have stopped taking vacations in exotic locations, achieving incredible success in their careers, and I am not privy to every single positive highlight reel of people I barely know. I don’t have anything to compare myself against ,and I am infinitely happier.

If people want to share something happy happening with them ,they call. I am genuinely happy for them, because these are the people I care about.

I read my news from newspapers which does not customize content based on what I read earlier. I know which newspaper is on which side of the ideology debates and I get a more balanced view of the world.